Instead of keeping him warm in frigid temperatures, the layers made him sweat. The sun shone brightly today, making it far warmer than yesterday. With the jacket he was too hot, but without it the cold made his teeth chatter. His muscles hurt from a combination of unfamiliar exertion and winter chill. Several times he had stepped into small windblown drifts that were deeper than they looked and snow had slid down inside his boots, quickly melting and soaking through his socks.
Mr. Sato did not feel very tranquil today.
Yet he kept his mouth set in a grim line and continued pushing his way through the trees, ducking branches, peeking into any hidden spot that seemed large enough to hide a boy. His hands had gotten sweaty in his gloves and now they were stuffed into his jacket pockets and he had pine sap stuck to his fingers.
"Sato-san!" called Officer Fuwa, the leader of their group of searchers. "Any sign of them?"
"Nothing!" Mr. Sato called back.
He could vaguely see the policeman and another searcher through the trees. The officer checked their locations on a frequency so consistent as to be maddening, but Mr. Sato knew it was necessary to make certain that no area of the mountain would be missed. Yesterday there had been far fewer searchers on the mountain and, though they had done their best, the net had been too wide. They had relied on the ability of the boys to respond to their shouts. Now, they all knew they were searching for students who might be sick, unconscious, or even dead, though no one wanted to discuss this last possibility.
Officer Fuwa called out to others in his assigned group and Mr. Sato heard their distant replies as he trudged through another small drift that had accumulated amidst a thick stand of pines. School had been canceled for the day, but he wondered what would happen tomorrow if they still had not found the missing boys. One death would be hard enough for the rest of the students, but if the others also did not survive . . . it would be awful. The teachers had all discussed the arrival of the new year as a kind of cleansing, putting the horrible events of the prior year behind them. But now it seemed that fate had further ugliness in store for Monju-no-Chie school. If Mr. Sato didn't know better, he would have thought someone had put some kind of a curse on the place.
He emerged into a clearing of sorts, the sun far too bright for January, and finally the sweat of exertion on the back of his neck became too much for him. With a grunt of displeasure, he removed his jacket, wishing he had never brought it in the first place. Carrying it around was more work than wearing it, but he needed to cool off again. Glancing around, he spotted Officer Fuwa in the trees off to his right and a man and woman together at the western edge of the clearing.
A glance at his watch gave him the strength for one more push. Officer Fuwa had scheduled a break in fifteen minutes, during which they could smoke or have a bit to eat or something to drink and restore themselves for another hour of hiking the mountain. Their group had only been searching two hours this morning, but already his legs felt like lead. Slim as he was, he had always assumed himself to be in fairly good physical condition for his age, but this experience had changed his mind.
With a deep breath he forged ahead, leaving the clearing and plunging once more into the thick woods. Fifty yards or so later he came upon a fallen tree and paused to look beneath it, just in case one of the boys had tried to take shelter there the night before. Even some sign of a fire or camp would have given him hope.
Movement in his peripheral vision drew his attention and he glanced to the right, thinking that Officer Fuwa had closed the distance between them. Through the trees he caught a glimpse of a solitary figure, pale and thin. Mr. Sato had worn the same glasses for too many years as his eyesight had continued to fail, and he needed stronger lenses. He blinked and took a step in that direction, squinting as he tried to figure out which member of his search party had gone so badly off course.
The boy staggered out of the trees, so white he seemed a ghost. Mr. Sato shouted in alarm and took several steps backward before he tripped over his own feet. The boy stumbled into him and the two tumbled to the ground together in a tangle of arms and legs.
Shock silenced him for several seconds as he extricated himself. The boy's eyes were wide and glazed and his lips were blue. His skin felt like ice, but his chest still rose and fell with every breath and a quick check of his pulse revealed that his heart remained strong.
Ren was alive.
"Officer Fuwa!" Mr. Sato shouted, cradling the boy in his arms. "I've found one of them! Over here!"
His many years of practiced calm had abandoned him. His emotions overwhelmed him. And yet he was not troubled by this at all. There were times when tranquility was beyond the reach of mortal man, and perhaps even of the gods.
"I don't understand," Kara said. "If this Etsoku Reizei was cremated, how could Yuki-Onna have inhabited her remains?"
They all studied her closely, but she could tell that it wasn't because the question had upset them; they were troubled because none of them had an answer. Sakura and Miho glanced at Kara's father, but he and Captain Nobunaga were now looking at Miss Aritomo.
"The stories are ancient," she said, pushing a lock of jet black hair away from her eyes with a delicate hand. "In the tale I spoke of, Yuki-Onna inhabited a corpse. This situation is different, but —"
Mr. Yamato sat up a bit straighter, eyes focused on the policeman. "The simple fact that we are discussing the possibility of Yuki-Onna entering our world and killing people on Takigami Mountain means we must be prepared to accept all manner of things that would seem outrageous at first. It may be her, or it may be some other demon, or it may be nothing supernatural at all."
"I don't think that's true," Kara said.
The principal gave her a sharp look and she quickly inclined her head in a short bow.
"With all due respect, Yamato-sensei, I think every single person in this room believes the supernatural is at work here. If it isn't Yuki-Onna, okay. But it's something unnatural. And given the power — the magic — that we have witnessed already, I can honestly say I would not be at all surprised to learn that a demon spirit might be able to . . ." she searched for a word. " . . . to construct a body out of human remains. The fact that Miss Reizei died during the first snow of winter is unsettling. It matches the legend too well. I hope it's . . . well, I hope we're wrong."
"As do I," Captain Nobunaga said.
Mr. Yamato nodded at Kara to let her know her brusque tone had been forgiven. Her father put an arm around her.
"Yamato-san," her father said, "what are you going to do about school tomorrow?"
The principal frowned, his eyes stormy. "I have a responsibility to educate these children. We need to return them to their routine as quickly as possible. We have had far too many disruptions over the past year. If the boys are found today, classes will resume tomorrow."
"And if not?" Miss Aritomo asked.
Kara felt sick. If not? What was she saying? Of course Ren and Hachiro would be found. They had found Sora and he had been dead, incapable of searching for rescue. Ren and Hachiro . . . Hachiro would be working on getting back to school, back to her. Even if they did nothing but walk in one direction, eventually they would come to the edge of the mountain and find a way down, and then they could circle around its base until the found a road or Takigami Park. They would be back today, she felt sure.
Unless they weren't capable of looking for a way home.
"That is a conversation for later," Mr. Yamato said firmly.
Miss Aritomo inclined her head. It seemed to Kara that their worry and grief had made them all seek comfort in formality.
Captain Nobunaga's phone buzzed.
"Nobunaga," he said as he answered.
They all watched him, reading his body language. His gaze fell and he put a hand to his forehead. His expression fell, his eyes darting from side to side as though searching the floor for answers. Kara thought he looked a little frightened. By the time he closed his phone, she suspected they all knew what he was g
oing to say.
"The Reizei grave has been vandalized."
Silence fell amongst them. Nearly one hundred percent of deaths in Japan resulted in cremation, with the deceased's ashes buried in a haka, or family grave. But the dead woman's haka had been disturbed.
"Etsoku's urn was broken. Her ashes are gone."
"This is too much to be a coincidence," Miss Aritomo said.
"Agreed," Mr. Yamato replied. "Until we learn something further, we must assume that the spirit we face is Yuki-Onna. With these ghosts some of you have seen, she may not be alone, or this might be only one aspect of a demon who can appear in many different guises. It is impossible to know —"
"Not impossible," Sakura interrupted. "It's just information we don't have yet."
Mr. Yamato did not chide her for her breach of propriety. Instead he nodded slowly.
"We will need that information," he said, glancing around at those gathered in the Harpers' dining room. "Finding those boys is our first priority, of course. But there are two other things we must do immediately. First, we must learn all we can about the various incarnations of Yuki-Onna, but in particular the one to which Miss Aritomo was referring."
"I will begin doing research immediately," Miss Aritomo said, a flicker of fear in her eyes.
"So will we!" Miho piped up. She glanced at Sakura and then Kara. "There are so many different sources that we should all work on it. If she's taken the boys —"
Kara blinked in surprise. "Taken?"
Miho nodded emphatically. "It's possible. You can't just assume that she's . . . that she's killed them. If she had, with all those people on the mountain, wouldn't they have found Hachiro and Ren already, the way they did Sora?"
"That makes sense," Miss Aritomo said, brows knitted in thought. "In several of the stories about her, Yuki-Onna is fascinated by handsome or beautiful boys, keeping them like some kind of collector of precious art."
"Do you really think that's possible?" Kara asked. "That she would keep them captive just for the company or whatever?"
Miss Aritomo gave her a grim look. "Until she tires of them. Yes, if this is Yuki-Onna, that is part of her legend."
"Then I pray you're right," Professor Harper said, giving Kara's shoulder a comforting squeeze. "That would give the boys a chance."
Captain Nobunaga tapped on the table. "I would not like to take officers away from the search parties on the mountain, but if there is a connection to the curse of Kyuketsuki, the girls will be in danger."
"We must presume this is all related," Mr. Yamato said. "But the search is of primary importance and your people are of most use in that task. It may be sheer luck that the boys were taken and the girls escaped before Yuki-Onna could claim them as well, or perhaps she was distracted by the presence of the boys, as Miss Aritomo suggests. Regardless, it was fortunate."
The principal looked at Kara's father. "We cannot risk them going anywhere near the mountain."
Professor Harper turned to stare meaningfully at Kara. "They won't."
Mr. Yamato nodded. "Good."
Captain Nobunaga spread his hands on the table, commanding the room with his presence. He looked at Mr. Yamato.
"You said there were two things that had to be priorities."
Mr. Yamato nodded. "The second is related. It is not enough to confirm that Yuki-Onna is the spirit we face, or how she came back into our world. We must find a way to defeat her."
"More than that," Miss Aritomo said, eyes narrowed in thought. She glanced up at Kara. "We are assuming that the demon cannot come down from the mountain, or away from the snows. But we do not know that. It may not be enough for you to stay away from the mountain. We must discover some other way to protect you if she comes to fulfill the curse."
Sakura gave a soft, humorless laugh. "Yes, we've been so lucky with protecting ourselves so far."
"Actually," Mr. Yamato said, "you have been very lucky."
If Sora's death and their understanding of this new danger had not sobered them enough, those words filled them all with dread.
"We should tell Mai and Wakana," Miho suggested. "They're not in any danger, but if Wakana saw a ghost . . ."
Kara nodded. "I agree. I'll talk to them."
Captain Nobunaga's cell phone buzzed again. They all turned to him, holding their breath, wondering what news this call might bring.
The policeman answered, listening intently. Kara saw the way his shoulders seemed to relax and she let herself believe the call brought good news. Nobunaga thanked his subordinate and ended the call, but even as he closed his phone he stood up from the table.
"If you will all excuse us, Mr. Yamato and I are needed elsewhere," Captain Nobunaga said.
"Did they find Hachiro and Ren?" Kara asked, almost pleading. "Are they okay?"
Captain Nobunaga looked first to Mr. Yamato, then to Kara's father, and at last he answered her question, stern eyes suddenly kind.
"Your friend Ren has been found alive. Other than frostbite, it appears he will be all right."
Kara's throat closed on her next question. She could not even put voice to it. Seeing this, Miho spoke for her.
"What about Hachiro?" she asked.
The policeman's eyes went cold once more. "There is still no trace of him. And according to the officer who found him, Ren cannot help them. He has no memory of anything that has befallen him since the blizzard began."
Kara lay on her side in bed and gazed longingly at her acoustic guitar, which sat bathed in moonlight on its stand across the room. Sleep felt very far away tonight. Her head ached and her heart hurt, both crammed full with far too many worries. Strangely, she did not feel afraid, only a little lonely. Her father slept in the next room and her friends were not far away, but in the darkness of her bedroom, she always felt alone.
Back in the spring, when she had been afflicted with terrifying dreams of dead girls with no faces and cats with darkly intelligent eyes, she had sometimes longed for home. The life she had known, the friends she had grown up with, were so far away. Her mother was buried back in Medford, Massachusetts, not far from the house she had lived in all of her life until she and her father had moved to Japan.
But though she still missed that place, it wasn't home anymore. Her father was here. Sakura and Miho were the best friends she had ever had. And Hachiro . . . she had fallen in love with his kind eyes and gentle spirit. Yet in spite of her happiness whenever she was with him, she had still felt herself holding part of herself back whenever she had been with him, knowing that she would have to leave one day.
Oh, Hachiro . . .
Her hands yearned for the feel of her guitar. All of the emotions bottled up inside of her needed release, and music could do that for her. It always had. She could play a song, something full of love and anguish. She needed to play. To sing. It was like pulling down a wall between who she was on the outside and what she felt on the inside.
Kara and the girls had spent hours doing research on Yuki-Onna, first online and then at the library, but come up with very little that seemed helpful. There seemed to be dozens of variations on the story, many of which had filtered into modern incarnations. She appeared in films and role-playing games and in stories and plays. Various legends portrayed her as a blood-sucking, vampiric witch or a demon, but in others she seemed almost benevolent, or little more than a ghost herself, appearing during the first snow of the year like Jack Frost.
Miho had taken copious notes while Sakura had flipped through books, searching for something that would give them some clue as to how to protect themselves. When they were sick of looking, the found a small storybook of Japanese folktales. Cover frayed and faded, published in 1913, it included the Yuki-Onna story that Miss Aritomo had told them about the Woman in White inhabiting the remains of a woman who had frozen to death in the first snow of winter, but it told them little that they did not already know.
At half past three, with the sky already dimming toward the early winter darkness, they ha
d left the library and hurried back to campus, hoping to see Ren, only to be turned away by Miss Kaneda, who insisted that they not intrude. Ren's parents had been with him since the early morning and they had asked not to be disturbed. As far as Miss Kaneda knew, he had not regained any of his memory of what had transpired on Takigami Mountain.
Walking home from the dorm, Kara had seen Mr. Yamato exiting the school with a couple she recognized from photos as Hachiro's parents. They looked lost, cast adrift from the moorings of their life, and she wanted to go to them and try to lend them some comfort, to assure them that their son would be all right — she would not allow herself to consider another alternative. But Hachiro had told her they weren't thrilled with the idea of him dating a gaijin girl, and she suspected that any words from her would give them no comfort at all.
So she kept walking.
Now she lay in bed, staring at the moonlight washing over her guitar. She could almost imagine she heard a single chord of music resonating in the room. Her pulse throbbed in her temples. The clock read 2:27 a.m. Kara desperately needed to sleep but she did not want to close her eyes. It seemed to her that as long as she remained awake and thinking of Hachiro, he was not completely alone out there on the mountain, in the cold.
Ren survived a night on the mountain, she told herself. Hachiro will be all right. They'll find him in the morning.
Had Ren seen Yuki-Onna? Had the winter witch done something to them?
Her thoughts raced. Hachiro was still missing, but Mr. Yamato had ordered students to return to classes tomorrow. How could anyone focus on learning anything? How could they act like it was over? Yes, Sora was dead and Ren had come back, but Hachiro was still out there on the mountain!
Kara sighed. Sleep seemed even further away. The longer she lay in bed, the more agitated she grew, and she had only a few hours before she would have to get up to get ready for school.
A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) Page 9